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The Old Republic – All Classes Revealed

For months now, thousands of people have been speculating and arguing about the names of the eight classes in SWTOR. Not since the debates about the identity of the “5th Cylon” in Battlestar Galactica has it felt like this. The message boards have been bathed in flame on a semi-permanent basis as titles like “Mandalorian” “Engineer” “Noble” and “Droid” were all tossed into the ring of possible classes. The hottest debate has centered on one question. Will there be one Jedi class and one Sith class? Or will there be two for each side, making the total force-users out to be four? Would Bioware make an mmo where four out of eight classes held lightsabers?

On some podcasts, like ToroCast, they felt completely certain that they knew that there were only two force users total. On my podcast, my co-hosts and I felt so certain that there were four force-users that we often talked about them without providing a disclaimer that their existence was unconfirmed.

But now, the last of the classes are confirmed, and the two-vs-four debate can finally die.
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A difficult game to balance for PVP

Once per week, I podcast about Star Wars: The Old Republic. On the last episode, when the subject of “invisibility” style stealth for the recently revealed Imperial Agent class came up, I was adamant in my opposition to it. I hate when you are trying to PVP and thieves or burglers pop out of thin-air and do burst damage as if they had some kind of invisibility spell. I felt pretty sure they wouldn’t give invisibility stealth to Imperial Agents because, afterall, it wouldn’t be balanced for the Imperial Agent to have both cover and invisibility stealth when the counterpart, the Smuggler, does not. Well it seems I was wrong, because the folks at Darth Hater have seen video of an Imperial Agent go stealth with an non-timed toggle switch stealth.

How is this possible I wonder? One side of the fence has stealth, the other does not. It’s possible I think, because the game may not be designed around PVP balance.
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Jedi Knight info leaks on SWTOR

It’s really hard for Bioware to keep the lid on anything once they start preparing their website for a reveal. Once someone finds a hidden link on the website, even if it only existed for 3 seconds, they post a screen capture of it and start a thread about it. By the time the thread is shut down and evidence of the restricted information deleted, most of it is copied over to Darth Hater where it can’t be touched by Bioware. This was the case with their accidental reveal of beta testing, and it has been again revealed with their accidental reveal of certain Jedi Knight concept art, icons, and even the Jedi’s animations.

Did we already know that Jedi will be in the game? Of course, but until it’s out, trying to hack screen shots out of their system is a game in-and-of-itself. Discussing why Bioware has hidden stubs like “http://www.swtor.com/info/holonet/space-combat” is likely to garner more information for the reader than a “No comment about space at this time” response from a developer. And you know what? Trying to find hidden and secret information is more fun than just being given the information to begin with.

STO vs TOR

Star Trek and Star Wars are always do things differently. Star Trek space battles play out like large naval ships swapping cannon fire and Star Wars space battles play out like World War era biplanes engaged in dog-fights. On the ground, Star Wars is all sword and sorcery with a sci-fi coat of paint, while Star Trek alternates between cowboy-style fist fights and cowboy-style shoot-outs with hand phasers and phaser rifles replacing six-shooters and shotguns.

People are going to compare the upcoming Star Trek Online to the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic, so I might as well throw in my two credits/latinum as well.

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Expectation of Balance

What follows is, a nitty gritty nerdy look at certain legacies on legendary items and class balance, so be warned.

Some time ago, I was trying to determine the value of different fire legacies on runekeeper items by determining their exact relation to the dps of runekeeper skills. There were two legacies which were causing me confusion. One of those legacies was called “Wrath of Flame Damage Over Time” and the other was called “Fire Skill Damage”. Because every single runekeeper fire skill does damage-over-time and every single runekeeper fire skill is considered a “Wrath of Flame” skill, I found this to be confusing. I thought that there must be a reason behind their separation. I thought that if one effected “Damage over time” specifically, the other must somehow… not do that.
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Voice of the Raid leader

I recently found audio from a particular raid leader who is somewhat famous for screaming obscenities at his raid over voice-chat. Just this morning, I find myself wondering if someone getting that bent out of shape is universally funny, or if it’s only funny to me because I see hints of that behavior in my least favorite raid leaders.

For example, the other night I was in a raid which was going to attempt to take down the Mistress. I’ve never killed the Blind One, let alone the Mistress, so the idea of taking down the final boss of the current raid was pretty cool. Someone in the raid asked for five minutes AFK, which we granted. After twenty minutes, people realized he had fallen asleep at the keyboard, again. All the top dogs in the raid started screaming at the top of their lungs into their microphones hoping to wake him up. After nearly an hour of waiting, we knew we only had one shot to attempt the Mistress before people went back to bed, so we tried to kill her with only eleven people. It didn’t go well

After we had started the fight, our missing raid member came back. He just said, “Back” and asked where everyone was. I don’t think he had any idea how long it had been.

A lot of obscenities were shouted at that moment. It wasn’t funny to me, because I was pretty annoyed myself. But now I wish I had recorded the moment, because some day I may go back and look at that situation and find it the funniest thing since Leroy Jenkins.

The Old Republic – One Micro Transaction at a Time

Star Wars the Old Republic has not announced their pricing plan officially. I think most people are expecting a monthly fee, but occasionally the topic of “micro-transactions” comes up on the message boards. Once the official boards are up and running again, I expect to see some threads dedicated to portions of the Beta tester terms of service because they indicate the existence of a micro-transaction system.
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Lotro doesn’t cower from radiance problems

A few weeks ago, Turbine gathered questions from players so that they could choose a few to answer. Well, the answers are out. Most of the questions felt like they were planted to highlight features we already know exist in the Mirkwood mini-expansion. Sapience admitted to answering a dev-written question during a dev-chat back in June, so I’m not too surprised. But that’s not the point of this particular blog entry. This is about gear-gating.
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Can’t Win

A friend of mine has been regularly attending every raid my kinship does for the last few months. Unfortunately, disagreements about loot distribution have erased all DKP from everyone while we argue about switching to a new system. He keeps losing rolls over and over in the raids. Some members of the Kin have fully equipped main characters and are now rolling for their alts, yet my friend hasn’t won a piece from any raid yet. He told me that if he didn’t win something in the next run, he would quit the game for a while. He’s angry that people keep rolling for their alts when he doesn’t have anything on his main yet.

The next raid I /roll’d for loot. When I won, I asked that the loot be given to my friend instead, but he refused. He wanted to win “fair and square”, and not be given the item. Even if we immediately went back to DKP or immediately went to a loot-ladder system, it would be too late for him. After a month of greed-rolls for loot and equipment distribution based on luck, he’s pretty much fed up with the game and the kinship.

I tried to help, but I just can’t win. And neither can he.

Did Turbine Plan Mirkwood?

I was completely sold on the idea of Rohan being Lotro’s next expansion. The main evidence of this proposed expansion was the registration of the URL “RidersofRohan.com”. Registered way back by Tokien Enterprises on April of 2006 and set to re-direct any visits to lotro.com. It was as good as a confirmation of the next expansion.

Two years later, in the summer of 2008, Tolkien Enterprises registered the following URLs: “siegeofGondor.com”, “treasonofIsengard.com”, “corsairsofUmbar.com” and “firesofMordor.com”.

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